Helena Walsh

Performance: The Pudding Club

In this durational performance, devised especially for CCLAP, Helena Walsh will reference ancient rituals and mythologies centered on food, fasting or silence related to her native Ireland. Tied to seasonal celebrations some of these rituals were later appropriated by Christianity. Many of these rituals were deployed by women to foretell the identity of their future spouse or the number of children they would have. In playfully repeating these archaic rituals in her ‘pie kitchen,’ Walsh will offer a retort to out-dated patriarchal norms that limit women to motherhood and domesticity in our contemporary times. In particular, the performance will consider Ireland’s anti-choice laws which were criticized by the United Nations Committee of Human Rights in 2014 for treating women as a ‘vessel and nothing more.’

Helena Walsh is an Irish live artist based in London. Her practice explores the relations between gender, national identity and cultural histories. Drawing on her lived and embodied experience Helena seeks to positively violate the systems, borders and rules that construct gender. Helena studied fine art at Limerick School of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design. In 2009 she received a Doctorate Award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to undertake a practice-based PhD in the Department of Drama, Queen Mary University of London, which she completed in 2013.